Part 3

In part three of his five-part series, Beliefnet expert and Religion 101 blogger Reed Hall explains the similarities between Judaism and Islam.

Righteous in God’s Eyes

All who are deemed adequately righteous in God’s eyes — those who have sufficiently satisfied the necessary divine criteria (conceived variously by the different religions) — will enjoy eternal bliss in heaven. Conversely, all whom God deems unrighteous are judged and sentenced accordingly; those who are found irredeemably guilty of having failed to meet the divinely mandated minimum standards (conceived differently by different religions, but required for entry into paradise) will instead suffer eternal torment in hell.

Again, there are variant understandings of just precisely what all of that really means, or just exactly how it will all actually play out, among the three major Semitic religions (not to mention among their numerous internal subdivisions). But that basic kernel or core idea is present in some form within each of them, and plays an important role within their respective theologies.

This entire cluster of beliefs about “last things” also sharply distinguishes the three Abrahamic faiths from other major world religions, which may maintain fundamentally and radically different beliefs of their own about the nature of the afterlife, or of ultimate human destiny (for example, Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh beliefs in reincarnation).